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June 18, 2017 12:54 pm
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Hezbollah Flags Fly at ‘Al Quds Day’ March in London as Islamist Agitators Blame Grenfell Tower Tragedy on ‘Zionists’

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avatar by Ben Cohen

A pro-Israel rally counters the 2017 “Al Quds Day” march in London. Photo: Screenshot

Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters marched through the streets of central London on Sunday on the annual “Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day” demonstration convened by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a British Muslim organization with close ties to the Iranian regime.

At a rally outside the US Embassy following the march, one speaker blamed this week’s tragic fire at west London’s Grenfell Tower public housing project on  “Zionists.”

“Some of the biggest supporters of the Conservative Party are Zionists,” the speaker ranted. “They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”

Many of the marchers brandished signs calling for a boycott of the State of Israel. A number of flags of the Lebanese Islamist terror organization Hezbollah were also in evidence, including one at the front of the protest that was tied atop a Palestinian flag.

An energetic counter-rally organized by British Jewish organizations under the banner “Stand Against Hate” was staged close to the route of the march. Protesters waved Israeli flags and chanted “terrorists, off our streets.”

The counter-rally was addressed by Kay Wilson, who survived a terrorist attack in Israel in 2010.

“It is a racist slur to say that all Muslims are terrorists,” Wilson said. “However, it is deluded, dangerous and disingenuous to claim that terrorism has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.”

Today’s march took place just a fortnight after eight people were murdered in an Islamist car-ramming and stabbing attack near Borough Market in south London.

A Hezbollah flag flies at the front of the 2017 “Al Quds Day” march in London. Photo: Screenshot

Ahead of the event, as Jewish communal officials urged London Mayor Sadiq Khan to ban the march, the IHRC encouraged its supporters to “bring a Hizbullah flag to show support for the political wing of Hizbullah.” While Hezbollah is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK, a widely-criticized exemption for the terror group’s “political and social activities” means that it is technically legal for its flag to be displayed in public.

“There were numerous Hezbollah flags and they were being handed out before the march started,” Simon Cobbs of activist group Sussex Friends of Israel told The Algemeiner.

A large number of attendees at the march were seen carrying signs reading “Justice 4 Grenfell” alongside their Hezbollah flags, in an attempt by the IHRC organizers to link their cause with the Grenfell Tower fire, in which more than 58 people are either confirmed or presumed by police to have died.

Marchers carrying Hezbollah flags alongside signs supporting the victims of the Grenfell Tower blaze. Photo: Screenshot.

Several prominent British personalities condemned the march, with Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, charging the UK government with “appeasing jihadists.”

The UK Zionist Federation also tweeted an image of the Hezbollah flags being distributed on the march.

“Al Quds Day” was initiated by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 following the Islamist seizure of power during the revolution that same year. The IHRC’s march in London usually takes place on the weekend after Al Quds Day, which falls on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

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